trample
/ˈtramp(ə)l
/verb [with object]
1Tread on and crush: the fence had been trampled down [no object]: her dog trampled on his tulips...
- Conversely, the likelihood of me trampling anyone as I walk down the street is highly unlikely!
- There have been villagers in other parts of Zambia mauled by lions, trampled underfoot by elephants and hippos.
- Last year, 14 pilgrims were trampled to death during the ritual and 35 died in a 2001 stampede.
Synonyms
tread, tramp, stamp, walk over;
squash, crush, flatten, compress, press (down), compact, pound, tamp down, mangle, pulp, mash, pulverize
1.1 [no object] (trample on/upon/over) Treat with contempt: a lay statesman ought not to trample upon the opinions of his Church advisers...
- ‘The country's relatively loose control over these companies has enabled some greedy bosses to trample on workers' rights’, she said.
- Born-and-bred residents are being trampled on by wealthy incomers who push property prices even further beyond their reach, they say.
- They had a big job to do in taking maintenance work back from numerous engineering companies, but that is no excuse for trampling over workers' employment rights.
Synonyms
treat with contempt, ride roughshod over, disregard, set at naught, show no consideration for, treat inconsiderately, treat disrespectfully, take for granted, encroach on, infringe, abuse, do violence to
noun literary
An act or the sound of trampling: destruction’s trample treads them down...
- The air got clogged with sounds of movement, clatters and tramples of feet and people.
- He heard the trample of a soldier and the muffled sound of the grenade going off.
- The woods began to move, too; and, with the familiar trample of horse hooves, an army clad in drab array appeared at its edge.
Derivatives
trampler
- To them, he became a trampler of the rule of law, an embodiment of every reactionary set-piece American political culture has ever produced.
- We've selected six shoes that run the gamut from high-mileage hedonists to gym-friendly treadmill tramplers.
- The subject of his fourth vision warns would-be or current tramplers to leave the poor and needy alone.
Origin
Late Middle English (in the sense 'tread heavily'): frequentative of tramp.